Ninja Reborn
by quil12
Summary: Dying sucks as I'm sure you've already figured out, but what comes after it can be an adventure of two lifetimes. OC alert
1. The Adventure Begins

Thank you for deciding to click on this story! Disclaimer-I don't own anything except my ideas (This disclaimer is for the rest of the chapters as well.

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My death was relatively quick, although painless by no means. All that I knew was that a crazy person with a gun had infiltrated my high school. Everyone in my third period language arts class was huddled in the far corner of the room with lights off. I was sitting next to my best friend, Randi. Randi was a small girl with short, shoulder length brown hair and blue eyes.

"Hey," she whispered softly to me,"Do you think they'll come here?" she asked, fear clearly showing in her face.

"Don't worry, Randi," I whispered back as quietly as she'd spoken,"As long as I'm here nothing bad will happen to you."

Suddenly, there was a loud banging on the door. Someone obviously wanted inside. One of my classmates yelped and stared at the entryway fearfully, I knew that everyone was scared, it was probably impossible not to be.

There was a slight lull in the banging, and then with one huge one, the meager protection of the wooden door gave way and a young man walked in, a crazed expression in his eyes, a gun in his hand. The sad thing was that I recognized him. I'd always seen him getting pushed around in the halls and he always sat by himself at lunch. I had wanted to talk to him, but my own shyness got in the way.

He looked at the class, toward the direction of Randi and me. I figured out that he was going to shoot this way as soon as I saw who was sitting in front of us. It was the ringleader of the people that bullied the kid. The ringleader, whose name was Tony, figured it out a split second before I did. He jumped out of the way of the bullet just as it was fired. This left Randi in prime position to take a bullet to the chest.

I acted instinctively, my body moving forward of its own free will. In an epic movie style second, I jumped in front of my friend, there was a little explosion of blood and I felt a sharp pain to my chest. I figured that the bullet must have hit a few centimeters from my heart. I wasn't dead yet, but I knew it was only a matter of time, I could already feel blood coursing out from the wound. Really, I just wanted it to be over, to have sweet unconsciousness free me from this unholy pain.

I looked up at Randi, who was sitting over me, her eyes welling with tears. With my last bit of strength, I managed to give her a weak smile, then said,"Well, I guess I managed to keep my promise."

That just made her cry harder, but I had no idea. The world was already fading around me, and the pain was starting to disappear. All that I could think was, why me?

(...)

Needless to say, I was extremely surprised when I woke up. What? I thought, I thought that I was dead. Anyway, where am I?

I attempted to turn my head to observe my surroundings, but found my neck muscles to weak. I also noticed other things, I felt different somehow, like I was smaller. Then, I noticed something else, there were wooden bars around me that opened up at the top. I tried to reach up to touch them, but found my hands securely bound by a blanket. I was starting to grow frustrated, how could I figure out where I was if I couldn't move?

That's when it hit me. It seemed so obvious. First, I'd died, now I felt smaller, and I was in a tiny wooden prison, it was almost like a crib. Well, I guessed that I'd finally figured out what happens after you die, you get reborn, although I thought that there was a bug in the system with me. I didn't believe that it was exactly normal to remember all your past experiences.

Now that I'd figured this out, a wave of questions started forming in my head. What was my name? Who were my parents? What section of the world was I in? Would I have to learn another language? What was school going to be like? Who was my new best friend going to be? The questions continued pouring from my mind until my infant body couldn't handle all the excitement. I fell asleep thinking wonderful thoughts of my new life.

(...)

I woke up to the sound of a door being opened. Again, I briefly wondered where I was, then remembered my revelation from before. Instantly, the questions started welling back up in my mind. It was at that time that I got two and a half of my questions answered. The first was who my mom was. I had to say that she was quite beautiful. She had pale lavender eyes, and gorgeous long hair that was the color of liquid moonlight.

I stared up at her in awe as she picked me up. Then, somewhat expectantly, she started speaking to me in another language. I mentally thanked my obsession with anime in my previous life as I recognized the language as Japanese. So, apparently I was going to have to learn a new language, but that was fine with me, I'd always wanted to learn the language. That also answered the question as to where in the word I was, Japan, obviously. Although, at that point, I had no idea how wrong I was.

My new mother had just sat down in a chair and was holding me and talking to me though I had no idea what she was saying. Then, she started rocking me back and forth in her arms and singing a soft, soothing, lullaby. Pretty soon, I was laying fast asleep in her arms.

(...)

I woke up again the next day, but this time, instead of just one person being in the room, there were two. My new mother was there, holding me in her arms, as well as a man that assumed to be my new father. He had jet-black hair, and green eyes. In looking at his main features, I failed to notice a few important details. The foremost being the headband tied around his forehead, or as I knew them to be, hitai-ate. I stared at it for a few seconds, I had recognized the symbol immediately, the symbol of Konoha, of the leaf.

He was also wearing the most common outfit of the shinobi of the leaf. It was the green Chunin jacket with black underneath. So, either my new father was a great cosplayer, or I was in the Naruto universe. If I could have, I would have squealed with joy. Instead, I just laughed and lifted my chubby hands into the air, touching his face with them. Both of my parents' faces lit up with smiles as they started laughing along with me.

(...)

It was what I assumed to be a few months later, and I was quite bored. One of the downsides of being reborn was being incapable of doing anything for yourself. I was also filled with angst. The most pressing matter at hand was when in the Naruto storyline I had ended up in. Somewhat unfortunately, I was about to get my answer that night.

Suddenly, I felt a huge tremor, and the loud roar of some beast. I felt my eyes widen just a little bit. Could it be...? I thought.

Then, I heard shouting from down below. It was my parents. Just like that, my suspicions were confirmed as I heard the word Kyuubi several times. It was October 10th, Naruto's birthday, the day of the nine tails attack, and the day Minato and Kushina died.

I heard a rapid flurry of footsteps on stairs, and the door to my room flew open. Mother burst through it and grabbed me. I figured that we were evacuating the village before the nine tails could reach us. Although, I was pretty sure we were safe. Our house seemed to be on the outskirts of the village, an area where the kitsune hadn't really wrecked.

Mother ran to the door of the balcony, yes, I had a balcony, and I had been very excited about it when I'd first seen it, and jumped down to the forest floor below the house. She ran with me in her arms through the forest, and to an unknown location to me where civilians were being evacuated. We reached the area, there were already quite a few people there, as well as some ninja to protect the civilians if need be.

Then, I spotted someone I recognized. No way! I thought. One of the ninja guarding us was none other than Kakashi Hatake. Of course, he was younger at this point in time and as only a few people knew, part of the ANBU. I knew that he'd been forbidden to fight Kurama, but I hadn't expected the Great Copycat Ninja to be here of all places. This, of course, made me wonder where the other senseis were right now. I had seen a girl that could have possibly been Kurenai here as well, but I wasn't entirely certain if it was her or not.

Unexpectedly, the Kyuubi, which could be see above the tops of the trees disappeared. I knew what had happened, but no one else did. It was almost time for Minato and Kushina to die, and the newborn Naruto to become an orphan. The sadness of the situation hit me, and I started bawling.

Mother looked down at me in surprise, this was the first time that I'd cried. Shaking off her surprise, she started to soothe me. I started to feel my eyelids grow heavy as I fell into sleep.

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I just want to say thank you for reading this, and I hope to make this story into something great.


	2. A New Friend

I figured it was sometime the next morning when I woke up. I had somehow ended up back inside my crib after falling asleep last night. It took me a few seconds to register the sound of sobbing somewhere to my left. In the past few months, I'd gained enough neck strength to turn my head. I looked over and saw Mother bawling with her face in her hands.

I even had a theory for why she was crying. If last night was the night of the nine tails attack and if my father had been a ninja, then there was a strong possibility that he was dead. Suddenly, Mother lifted her head and saw that I was awake. She got up from the chair she was sitting on and walked over to pick me up.

With tears still coursing down her face, she held me in her arms and said something. I was still learning Japanese, but I recognized a few of the words - enough of them for it to make sense anyway. The words I recognized were, sorry, father, nine tails. Yep, I was right, my father had been one of the ninja that had died last night.

I had a strange conflict going on inside me. One was saying that I should be crying too seeing as it was my father. The other side was argueing that I hadn't really had an emotional bond with him. Despite my confusion, I eventually just followed my mother, and, for the second time since I was reborn, I cried.

(...)

It was about four years later, I would only have to wait for a little less than a year before I could enter the ninja academy. Today, Mother was taking me to the park. I was hoping that I could find one of the main Naruto characters and start a friendship with them. I didn't want to be an insignificent part of this story so the obvious solution was to start an early friendship with one of the Rookie 9.

As soon as Mother and I reached the park, I realized I was in luck, for I saw the younger version of one of my favorite characters; Sasuke Uchiha. I had to stop myself from running up to him and having a fangirl moment. Instead, as soon as Mother told me to go and play, I walked as casually as I could over to him, while the fangirl inside of me was screaming at the top of her lungs.

He looked up as I walked over to him, obviously wondering what I wanted.

Trying to seem as friendly as possible, I smiled and said,"Hi, I'm Zaria Ibaraki!"

He seemed a little bit surprised at me forwardness, but, seeing as he wasn't yet completely bent on avenging his clan, said,"I'm Sasuke Uchiha."

"So, what'cha doing Sasuke-kun?" I asked him, wanting to become friends with him as quickly as possible.

Still looking a little shocked that I was actually attempting normal conversation with him - I figured that he was plagued with fangirls even at such a young age - said,"Well, there's this little bug here and I wanted to make a house for it."

I smiled again,"May I help?"

"Sure," was his reply.

This was actually something that I enjoyed doing, in my past life I'd spent hours as a kid making a city for various small animals and bugs with one of my friends. I drew on that experience now as we built, and by the end of it, we had some dirt walls standing up. I lined the bottom of it with grass figuring that the bug would need something to eat. I actually didn't know what kind of bug it was, I figured that it was some bug that either only existed in areas that I hadn't lived in my previous life, or it was a species exclusive to the Naruto universe.

After we carefully placed the bug inside the structure, we placed longer pieces of grass over the top of it, effectively creating a roof. Just as we got done doing that, Mother called out for me, informing me that we were going home.

"Well, bye Sasuke-kun," I said to my new friend,"That was fun!"

"Bye Zaria-chan," Sasuke yelled at me as I ran toward Mother. I lifted my hand up and waved.

(...)

Mother and I walked into our house. It stood on the edge of the village, near the woods. The dark green of the house matched the forest it stood in front of. The house was a total of two stories, my room was on the second story, and had a small balcony overlooking the woods.

Today, Mother led me into the kitchen, and we both sat down at the table.

"Zaria," Mother said,"There's something I want to tell you."

"What?" I asked, wondering what she could tell me that I didn't already know.

"Have you ever heard of a Kekkai Genkai?"

I wondered if this was going where I thought it was. I nodded, of course I knew about them!

"Well, the Ibariki clan has one."

_Awesome, _I thought.

"What does it do?" I asked the inevitable question.

"It's called Beast Transformation, and as the name suggests, it let's you transform into an animal of your choice."

_Awesome, _I thought again. I figured that it would have been something completely unhelpful, like summoning a low-level weapon, or something stupid like that. This sounded much cooler, and 100 times more helpful.

"Will you teach it to me?" I asked, practically buzzing with excitement.

"That's the reason I brought it up," Mother replied.

"When can we start?"

She laughed," Now, I guess."

"Yay!" I said, jumping out of the chair I had been seated in.

(...)

It was about an hour later and I had learnt all the basics, now it was just a matter of doing it. The first step in performing this jutsu was to make the Tora (Tiger) hand sign and thinking about what animal you wanted to become. Mother had told me that her first transformation had been a wolf, so that was what I was trying for.

I made the hand sign, _wolf, wolf, wolf, _I thought. Nothing happened. I sighed and tried again, and again, and again...

(...)

I had been trying to do this for a week now, and nothing had happened. I was starting to grow slightly discouraged. I walked to the familiar training ground that I had been trying to do this in for the week.

I walked to the postion I had been standing in every time I did this. I knew that Mother was standing in the window, watching. I made the hand sign, _wolf, _I thought, with a little edge to my mental voice.

Unexpectedly, I felt my body start changing. After the change had occured, I looked down at myself, I still looked mostly human, but my body was covered in fine silver hair, it was the same color as my hair, I'd inherited Mother's hair, and my father's green eyes. I also knew that my sense of smell was heightened as well as my hearing.

Mother opened the door and came outside clapping,"Good job, Zaria, you got a half transformation!"

I looked down at myself again, letting the jutsu fade as I didn't have enough chakra to keep it going any longer. I sighed, realizing I still had a long way to go, _maybe Kekkai Genkai aren't all they're cut out to be, _I thought.


End file.
